Statistics Canada data suggests that persons with disabilities, Indigenous and racialized identities are vastly underrepresented in workforces in Canada. To help marginalized students and alumni seek employment, the Student Success Centre launched the Career Access Program for Students, a suite of services offered in collaboration with the Student Accessibility Centre and Maccess.
CAPS focuses on skill building and career development through career advising, strategic goal setting and personal branding. Students also work on creating an employment action plan that is customized to meet their needs.
The program is for students and alumni that identify as persons with disabilities, First Nations, Metis and Inuit persons, members of racialized communities, First Generation students and LGBTQA2S+ students.
Students and alumni can book one-on-one appointments through OSCARPlus, participate through events, or utilize online resources to learn about financial accommodations for students with disabilities, wellness support services, a transit accessibility initiative and campaigns to promote diverse practices.
The SSC also introduced a new position.
Katherine Hesson-Bolton started her position as the diversity employment coordinator in July 2018.
Her initial goals were finding her way around campus alongside first-year students, reading reports, developing a network with faculties, students, campus services and partners and identifying service gaps and needs.
Hesson-Bolton’s role places her in a unique position as a connecting link between McMaster and the greater community.
She regularly meets with employers in hopes of coming away with jobs and opportunities for students while also having conversations around diversity hiring and removing barriers.
She then is able to provide employers with on-campus and external resources, such as ones coming from Pride at Work Canada, to help them address diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
“It’s really about having a conversation with the employer to hear what their needs are, what McMaster students’ needs are, and then finding that fit… So it’s really about relationship building on both sides,” said Hesson-Bolton.
“It also comes back to reaching back to those campus partners, whether it’s student accessibility services or Indigenous services,” said Hesson-Bolton. “I also work a lot with and involve students on campus because it’s really important to get students’ perspective and their feedback.”
Hesson-Bolton also strategizes with employees on branding. Some employers have identified that they want to focus on inclusion, but do not know how to identify and address the needs of new employees.
“You may have employers who will want to hire students with disabilities. And the question back is ‘have you thought about how your workplace is set up? What are your policies, procedures, your staff education, so that the new employee feels included?’,” said Hesson-Bolton.
Hesson-Bolton starts the conversation by discussing meeting the needs of new hires, whether that be identifying the accommodations that would allow persons with disabilities to work, establishing prayer spaces or recognizing that always having social events in establishments that serve alcohol may exclude some individuals.
Hesson-Bolton also has important conversations with students and alumni around disclosure in the workplace and accommodation plans.
She also provides a space for students to talk about their frustrations, experiences with discrimination, while also connecting them to mentors and peers with similar lived experience.
There is a strong need for university services to support students entering the workforce and address the barriers to diversity and inclusion. The CAPS program and the role of the diversity employment coordinator are just getting started.
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
By: Maryanne Oketch
One of the reasons I chose to enrol at McMaster University was for the diversity that the school claimed to offer. Coming from a predominantly white secondary school, I was excited to attend a new school. I was hopeful that I would make connections within my program and maybe gain a support system consisting of people that could relate to the experience of being Black in academia.
When I entered the integrated science program in 2016, I was disheartened to realize that in my year of entry, I was the only student in my program that was Black, alongside two other individuals with mixed backgrounds. Within the week, this dropped to two, as one person switched out. Within the month, it then became clear that the two of us were not just the only Black students in our year, but in the whole four-year program.
This lack of Black peers created a feeling that I had to be the best of the best, and when I couldn’t reach that goal, I would withdraw rather than reaching out. This caused damage to my grades, reputation and relationships with my peers.
It is a well-known fact that there is a disparity between the Black population and our representation in higher education. This gap can be seen more in supplementary-based programs that McMaster offers, and my experience unfortunately is not an isolated one.
Multiple students from different programs stated that the lack of Black students in their programs made them feel like there were few people who could relate to the struggles that come with being Black.
There was also another complexity that I did not consider — the fact that there are more Black women in academia than Black men. One health sciences student, upon realizing that they were the only Black man in their whole year, experienced feelings of isolation.
In addition, a justice, political philosophy and law student was the only Black man in their program, and though he is friends with Black women, he notes that it is not fully the same.
Regrettably, the issues that stem from the lack of diversity do not just have interpersonal effects, but also affect the learning experience. A student in the arts and science program said that there were times when a professor or student would ask a question that pertained to race, and the question would seem pointed at them, the only Black student in their year.
This student can also recall a moment when a professor made a comment about how some students may be used to hearing racist jokes, and then locked eyes with them, creating an uncomfortable situation.
Another former arts and science student had a class where a classmate attempted to defend slavery, and a professor who taught a class about oppression but refused to use the term “racism”. The student states that they never felt challenged by the program, and felt that they had to do the challenging rather than their instructors. This was due, they say, to the structure and instruction of the program being catered to their affluent white peers and not to them.
The catering of programs does not seem limited to just arts and science but can also be seen in McMaster Engineering Society programs. A student within the program switched out after one semester due to the lack of actual inquiry in the program, but a focus on the marks received.
When a peer in their program stated that "the disadvantaged [in Hamilton] aren't doing enough for the more privileged to help them," the professor did not immediately shut down this false and insensitive statement, but instead was complacent. In addition, the structure of the program encouraged students to repeat the same statistics because that is what is needed for a good grade, and not because the students wished to learn more about societal issues.
If multiple Black students in different years and different programs are saying the same thing, there needs to be some sort of change to support these students when they are in the program. I am not suggesting these programs change their selection process, because this lack of diversity is a systemic issue, and I do not have the knowledge to provide suitable solutions to help mitigate the effects.
Regardless, if McMaster strives for diversity and does not have the necessary structure to support the diverse students that they already have, then their efforts are just a baseless claim to obtain more money from a diverse group of students.
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
The paper received an email asking for a response to a few questions by July 25 for an article that will be up on J-Source, which is a collaboration of post-secondary journalism schools led by Ryerson, Laval and Carleton. It will be about whether student media represents the diversity of Canada.
The questions mainly had to do with the self-identification of the editorial board, our staff, on a number of different categories. These were based on gender, race with specific note to Indigenous people, disabilities and gender or sexual minorities. While they could have divided a few of these categories to be more specific, analysis of diversity in the workplace continues to be a positive endeavour that should be undertaken and explored more in-depth.
McMaster’s Employment Equity Working Committee released a new report on July 23 in a similar vein. It provides a detailed roadmap based on input from different parts of campus, e.g., each of the different faculties and research departments. The focus is primarily on “... a more complete understanding of representation of all four groups designated by the Federal Contractors Program: women; First Nations, Metis and Inuit (FNMI) peoples; persons with disabilities; and members of visible minorities, as well as the representation of trans and LGBTQ+ employees.”
The last recent example for this article will be a comment piece by the Public Editor over at The Varsity, which is the University of Toronto’s student newspaper. While a lot of it has to do with online commenting platforms, it transitions into the commitment the paper has, “... to diversity in its newsroom and reporting.” Their primary focus seems to be on gender and race.
These three examples from university campus media and McMaster have varying degrees of data collection and analysis, but all of them miss a few categories. While there are more categories of diversity, these three are, arguably, the most apparent ones missing.
The first is socioeconomic status. However, that would have less influence if you are considering only university student journalists or McMaster employees in your sample. The second would be ideologies, e.g., political beliefs and religious beliefs. I can understand not asking these respondents may not be comfortable answering accurately or answering at all, and may change at a more variable rate over time. The third is age.
While certainly not as attractive a stat, diversity in age should be deemed an importance if your goal is to represent the population in what you report about, who is reporting and the demographics of your employees.
University is always idealized as a place where you develop and grow. It is easy for anyone to note the differences between a first year and a fourth year and someone fresh out of university to someone about to go into retirement. When you are getting survey data or considering your workplace’s diversity, why would you ignore something as important as age?
It is simply too important. When it comes to reporting at The Silhouette, diversity and different perspectives have a significant influence on our articles in every section. The diversity of who is reporting it or who is being reported on is vital to allow a full representation of the McMaster student body, and to continue to progress and pass on information to the younger members of staff before graduating.
We cannot afford to ignore age. If other organizations or the university have missed the point by filling quotas instead of noting the benefits and embracing all types of diversity, including one as obvious as age, then that is disappointing.
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
By: Arnav Agarwal
Despite having relatively easy access to education in Canada, we, as students, have found new reasons to complain: the work-load is intense, our schedules are packed between classes and homework, and weekends are far too short.
While some might think this sentiment is characteristic of midterm season alone, they would be surprised to learn where Canadian students stand on a global scale in terms of overall attitude to schooling. For a country whose government’s expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP stacked up to 5.2 per cent, ranking 49th among 132 listed countries, 37 per cent of school-going children indicated they do not like attending school and 58 per cent of students find school boring. This puts into question how effective the education system truly is at providing students a valuable and engaging learning experience.
Student tuition fees have never been a popular area with the Canadian student body, and understandably so. An increase of 26.6 per cent is evident in undergraduate tuition fees in less than ten years, comparing fees from 1999-2000 to those of 2005-06. The high dependence on OSAP, scholarships, bursaries and loans is quite understandable when one considers an educational expenditure for undergraduate studies having only grown from the $4,214 mark it stood at in 2005-06. Almost half of the college and university classes who graduated in 2000 owed money to government, non-government or both government and non-government sources, highlighting the financial burden the educational system places on a demographic that is largely still in the process of establishing itself.
While the holes are evident in the Canadian educational experience, the country has enjoyed numerous successes in funding an educational system which has demonstrated effectiveness in multiple aspects. In 2002 and 2003, total expenditures on education in Canada amounted to $6,667 per student, with approximately 5 million students were enrolled at elementary or secondary institutions and another 689,700 were enrolled in full-time or part-time post-secondary education nation-wide. The financial resource investment has sky-rocketed up, as Statistics Canada reported total expenditures per student averaging $31,103 on university education in a 2012 report, while expenditures stood at $11,489 for secondary education and at $10,758 for primary education in 2008-09. A growing investment into the student learning experience is clearly evident within the decade.
An assessment of educational qualifications placed Canada at the top of a list of twenty-one OECD countries in 2003, for percentage of working-age population between the ages of 25 and 64 who held a college or university degree: outdoing its neighbours to the south by 6 per cent, Canada having 44 per cent of its middle-aged population as credential-holders captures the success of the educational system in being easily-accessible and well-rounded. A study by Statistics Canada in 2004 further reinforced these notions, identifying 59.1 per cent of those aged between 25 to 54 in the country as being post-secondary certificate or university degree holders, 8.0 per cent as having been enrolled in some form of post-secondary education, 20.1 per cent as being high-school graduates, and only 12.9 per cent as having less than a high-school education.
A more recent assessment completed in 2009 yielded similar results, indicating 50.8 per cent of those aged 15 and over had attained some form of post-secondary education.
So, where does the Canadian educational system stand now? Student attitudes towards their education or the resources they have to utilize to gain access to it don’t seem extremely positive. However, increased investment in the educational system over the years, as well as positive nationwide population assessments over several years are indicative of a growing educational system and one that, despite having its shortcomings and being a work in progress, continues to enjoy its own successes.
By: Zara Lewis
It seems to be that on every block you turn there is one homeless person after the next, each waiting to be given that extra dollar from passersby. And at night, store entrances turn into a place to sleep for the homeless.
In 2007 the figure of homelessness in Canada stood between 200,000 to 300,000 people, with a further 1.7 million residents struggling to afford their homes.
According to a report carried out in January 2012 by Hamilton Urban Core Community Health Centre, statistics have shown that Hamilton has one of the highest poverty rates amongst the cities in Ontario with 23 per cent of the population, translating to more than two in five people living in poverty.
Recently the Ontario government has revealed that they will be modifying the funding designated to social services. These changes will result in less money being given to programs set up around Hamilton that aim to tackle the issue of homelessness.
The Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction is one organization which aims to address the unacceptable levels of poverty experienced in Hamilton. Tom Cooper, Director of the organization, is unhappy with the recent funding changes. He said, “We are very discouraged that the Ontario government has abandoned its commitment to a poverty strategy and are not protecting the most vulnerable residents of our community.”
In response to the changes The Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction already has plans underway in order to combat this new set back: “we are working all hands on deck to change the provincial governments minds as it is so detrimental to the community,” Cooper said. The charity has since been in contact with Hamilton City Council to look at a day of action in order to speak out to provincial politicians.
Closely linked to the issue of homelessness are the mental health issues that often affect a large proportion of individuals who are homeless. Research from the Canadian Journal of Public health in 2005 found that 6 per cent of the homeless in Toronto have schizophrenia, and a further 20-40 per cent have affective disorders such as kleptomania, major depressive disorder and impulse control disorders, amongst others. In addition to this Toronto’s Pathways into Homelessness Project found that 29 per cent of shelter users met the criteria for having anti-social personality disorders.
Evidently, the issue of homelessness is a very pressing problem, and here at McMaster University the problem hasn’t gone unnoticed. DeGroote Impact is a student-run initiative, now in its fifth year, and works to support the Good Shepherd Youth Shelter.
“5 Days for the Homeless” is one of the biggest events DeGroote Impact puts on in which students live outside the student centre for the week to raise awareness about what the public can do to help the homeless. They also run bake sales and talent shows. This year is no exception and DeGroote is hoping to launch the best campaign they have had so far, and spread the message further than the year before.
